The present technique relates to an apparatus and method for facilitating communication between a telecommunications network and a user device within a building.
As more and more users embrace mobile technology, this is placing ever increasing demands on the mobile networks used to support mobile communication. The networks are required to not only support an ever increasing number of devices, but also as the functionality associated with such devices becomes ever more complex, so this has also increased the capacity requirements within the network.
In order to seek to improve network capacity, emerging wireless telecommunications techniques are seeking to use ever higher frequencies for the telecommunications signals. For example, some emerging telecommunications Standards are seeking to use the millimetre (mm) wave frequency range. The use of such high frequency signals can significantly increase capacity, but one technical challenge is the high penetration loss encountered by such high frequency signals, which can significantly affect coverage. For example, direct transmission of millimetre wave services from outdoor infrastructure to indoor devices may be impossible in many situations, due to the significant attenuation caused by the building's structure.
Such problems can be particularly acute in urban environments where there is typically not only a high density of users, but where the urban infrastructure, such as large buildings, can significantly attenuate signals, and hence exacerbate the problem of seeking to provide sufficient network coverage and network capacity to service the users. Users expect not only to obtain good quality connections outdoors, but also whilst indoors.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a mechanism that alleviated the attenuation problem associated with the use of high frequency telecommunications signals.